The Sapphires dominates AACTA Awards

The Sapphires dominates AACTA Awards - The West Australian

The populist bent of Australia's version of the Oscars continues, with the hit Vietnam-era musical The Sapphires blitzing more serious-minded contenders to dominate this year’s Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Awards.

The Sapphires took out almost all of the important categories at last night’s glittering ceremony at Sydney’s Star Event Centre, including best picture, best director (Wayne Blair) and three out of the four acting prizes.

Last night’s gold rush took The Sapphires’ overall tally at this year’s AACTA Awards to 11 (the film also scooped most of the technical prizes given out earlier in the week), completing a fairytale run for Wayne Blair’s adaptation of Tony Briggs’ stage musical which premiered to a standing ovation in Cannes in May last year.

Such was the dominance of The Sapphires that the relatively inexperienced Jessica Mauboy beat bigger name actors Essie Davis (Burning Man), Rebecca Gibney (Mental) and fellow Sapphire Deborah Mailman (Mental).

Predictably, Mailman and Irish comic Chris O’Dowd took out the acting prizes. Their chemistry and the soaring vocals of pop princess Mauboy are the keys to the success of The Sapphires, which has taken almost $17 million at the Australian box office since its release in August last year.

The only major prize The Sapphires failed to pick up was best supporting actor simply because it had no entry in that category. It went to Antony Starr for Burning Man.

The Sapphires victory follows up last year’s surprise winner Red Dog, signalling the newly established AACTA Awards (this is its second edition of the AFI Awards replacement) will favour crowd-pleasers over artistic ambition.

The WA presence was not high at this year’s AACTAs. However, fast-rising Perth filmmaker Zac Hilditch won best screenplay for his short Transmission and popular export Mandy McElhinney (aka Rhonda in the AAMI commercials) best support actress for Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War in the television strand of the awards.

AACTA Awards winnersFeature Film

BEST FILMThe Sapphires, Rosemary Blight, Kylie du Fresne

BEST DIRECTIONThe Sapphires, Wayne Blair

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAYWish You Were Here, Kieran Darcy-Smith, Felicity Price